


together, or not at all (we're not meant to survive this)

by genericlesbian72



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abrupt Change in Writing Style, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Attacking Trees, Bad Fire Safety, Body Horror, Brief mentions of child abuse, Canon-Typical Child Eating, Canon-Typical Violence, Childlike perspective, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dead Georgie Denbrough, Dialogue Mention of the Evil Dead, Existential Horror, Female Losers Club (IT), Feral Little Girls, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Girls Playing Witches in the Woods, Horror, Meta Musings on the Nature of Victimhood with Girls in Horror, Psychic Bond, Quote fic, Rationalizing Horror as a Game, Reclamation of Narrative Agency, The Losers Club Have the Shining (IT), They're maybe 8-10 years old in this, Vampires as a Brief Metaphor for Internalized Homophobia, Witches, background pining, mention of serial killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genericlesbian72/pseuds/genericlesbian72
Summary: There's a ghost haunting Libby Denbrough. A ghost that looks exactly like her dead little brother.A story about monsters, the indescribable horror of girlhood and the friends you make along the way.Quote Prompt: "“Girls can be brave too,” Beverly said gravely" for the Labor Day Book Quote Challenge (2020)
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: Labor Day Book Quote Challenge (2020)





	together, or not at all (we're not meant to survive this)

**Author's Note:**

> appropriately, this was a labour of love! many thanks to the discord, you guys were such a blast 
> 
> this also turned out to be much weirder than I thought it was going to be.

It started with Libby Denbrough

Technically, IT really started with Georgie Denbrough and his left arm. But none of them liked to think about that. It felt too real. None of them, save maybe Michaela and her growing nest of books, knew the etymology of the word ‘visceral’, but if they did, they’d know why using it to think about Georgie’s death felt so uncomfortable. 

So, to the little group of awkward girls, IT started with Libby. 

“I think I’m haunted.” Libby said abruptly one afternoon. It was after school, and aside from the muffled bickering of Richie and Emily in the hammock, the clubhouse was quiet. 

“Why do you think that?” Beth said, looking up from her sketches. 

Maybe they would have been more skeptical if Libby hadn’t been acting exactly like she was haunted. Grief and ghosts could look the same, when you’re still young enough to not have experience with the former, and Libby hadn’t spoken in days. 

As young as they were, they had realized that they should have had a Talk before this. A Talk that could have ended in some comforting words, a hug. But Libby was always the one who had given those Talks, who always knew exactly what to say through her stutter, and none of them knew how to do it right.

But if she was haunted, that was fixable. Ghosts follow rules, all children know that. 

“I can’t stop s-seeing G-G-G-G-.” Libby’s voice caught on his name like a broken record. She stopped, took in a deep breath, and said “B-but he’s scary. He has t-too m-m-many teeth. And he’s m-mad at m-m-me.”

Bev, perched on the ladder like she was ready to run at a moment's notice, said, “But why would he be mad at you?”

Libby curled in on herself, tucking her head against her knees. She didn’t say anything. 

Nothing happened for a week.

But six days later, the peaceful quiet of the clubhouse was broken again. This time, by Michaela half-scrambling, half-falling into the clubhouse. She was panting heavily; a considerable amount of shallow scratches ran up her arms and face and she had rips in her jeans. Exhausted, she slumped against the nearest wall as chaos erupted around her. 

It was Libby who finally broke through the din of confused yelling. She wordlessly placed their well-stocked first aid kit in Emily’s hand while pointing at Michaela, who was now trying to fend off Richie and Bev’s insistence that they go out and avenge her. 

The fact that both of them were under five feet tall and with even less athleticism than most of their elementary school classmates didn’t seem to occur to them. 

But there was a weird sense, as they watched Emily irritably patch up a quiet Michaela, that it might not matter.

Michaela started speaking as Emily carefully finished laying Band-Aids on the scratches. Most of them weren’t even bleeding, but Emily was insistent that she had to disinfect and bandage them anyways. According to her, that was what you did when someone was hurt. 

“The trees attacked me,” Michaela began, frowning in confusion, “in the Barrens. They were scratching and hitting me until I kicked them off and ran here.” Pulling up the side of her t-shirt revealed a litany of purpling bruises. Emily hissed through her teeth and started digging around for an ice pack.

This was upsetting to all of them on a deeper level than it should have been. Ghosts were one thing, yes, and dead brothers another, but the Barrens were _theirs._ They were supposed to be safe in the trees.

Michaela looked down at the cuts in her jeans. “Aw, my mom’s going to be so mad.” 

“Tell her you tripped and fell.” Shanna offered.

Michaela perked up. “Well, I did fall. So that’s not a lie.”

“D-d-did you s-see h-h-him?” Libby’s voice, after another week of not speaking, was hoarse from disuse. They all turned to look at her. 

“No.” Michaela said quietly. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“I think it’s still a ghost though,” Richie said, pushing her oversized glasses up her nose, “there was this movie I saw once on TV and it had these trees with moving branches and it grabbed this one woman and then my dad noticed and turned it off,” she rolled her eyes. “So I guess if this ghost attacks us again we can blame Ol’ Wentworth because now I don’t know how to defeat evil ghost trees.” 

Richie had the skill of talking extremely fast and for a long time in one breath. She was only matched in it by Emily. The two of them frequently drove everyone else around them crazy with how much they needed to talk over each other and with how much sweet little Emily Kaspbrak could drive _herself_ crazy yelling over Richie’s half-remembered jokes.

Richie also hadn’t quite learned the cadences of a joke yet. She didn’t know to pause before a punchline, so it all came out as a stream-of-consciousness. She’d figure it out eventually. 

If she survived the next week. 

“Would Georgie attack me with trees?” Michaela said in a thoughtful tone, already picking at one of her Band-Aids. “I thought he liked me.”

The past tense was enough to make Libby flinch. 

“He’s not Georgie, he’s a ghost. Ghosts do stuff like that all the time.” Richie announced with an air of expertise. 

Crouched beside her, Emily looked up at her face with wide eyes. “So what do we do now?” She said. 

Here, they all paused. Ghosts were understandable: ghosts had rules. But the less-spoken rules buried in their ghost stories were that the people who dealt with ghosts were brave heroes. And they were a group of seven girls. Seven girls who would do anything for each other, but to whom it had been demonstrated with countless fairy tales, bedtime stories and movies that brave heroes were boys. As girls, they were victims and pretty little prizes. If they went up against the ghost, they would die, or go to sleep forever, and have to wait for the real hero to come rescue them. 

Libby said “It’s my b-b-brother. I need to help him.” It was in a tone they hadn’t heard in a while, but was unfortunately familiar: Libby had made up her mind and nothing but an act of God could stop her now.

Shanna crossed her skinny arms, but she nodded. “Okay. What do ghosts not like? If we can do something he doesn’t like maybe he’ll leave us alone.”

“Ghosts don’t like when their stuff gets burned?” Richie offered. 

“No one likes it when their stuff gets burned!” Emily snapped. Last week, one of her hair ribbons had fallen victim to the brief period between when Richie found a lighter on the playground and when one of the teachers confiscated it. 

Richie opened her mouth to respond, which would have ignited a familiar round of bickering if not for Shanna raising her voice. “So we burn something of Georgie’s, and see if that makes the ghost go away.”

Bev had been quiet for a lot of this, eyes flickering back and forth as her friend’s spoke. The clubhouse meant safety, yes, but that wasn’t enough for her most of the time. Especially not when Michaela had Band-Aids all over her arms. 

Beth was silent too, but in a different way. Her eyes were off somewhere, lost in thought. 

“How do we know we’re doing it in the right way?” Beth said, finally. “My mom always told me not to play with fire.”

“We’re not _playing_ ,” Richie insisted at the same time that Emily said rapidly, “Yeah, Mommy said fire is dangerous and did you know there are types of burns that make you need to get new skin, _new skin-_ -”

“Witchcraft!” Michaela said suddenly, smacking her hands down on their rickety fold-out table. “That’s it!”

“Witchcraft?” Beth repeated.

“Witchcraft!” Michaela was alight with this new idea. “I saw a book in the library once about witches and they had this super big fire going.”

“Ghosts probably don’t like magic.” Richie said thoughtfully. 

“I’m sure if I can find that book that it’ll tell us how to burn out a ghost properly.” Michaela said, endlessly hopeful about the information found in their small-town library.

So they agreed. They’d meet up the next day, downtown, far away from the trees. Just in case. 

All seven of them headed home with their hackles up, metaphorically, and in careful groups of twos and threes.

There was a curfew in Derry. There had been since the first disappearance. It was an automated response to the horrors that the good people of the little town kept buried deep underground. A vague sacrifice to the idea that they, of all the parents, could keep their children safe. 

Every day, the Losers promised their parents that they would stick in groups, stay away from strangers and be home by dark. Even Emily’s mother, widely agreed to be the embodiment of grasping overprotectiveness, let her go out the door if she promised not to get dirt on her shoes and stay away from any boys. 

It shouldn't have been that easy to stay unsupervised. Maybe, for all the curfews and murdered children, their parents were collectively too used to the way things were. Or maybe the Losers didn’t want to stay inside where it was safe, so they simply couldn’t be made to. 

~

That night, Shoshanna Uris couldn’t sleep.

This happened to her often, when her thoughts kept getting caught on ‘what-ifs’, circling around and around her little head until she could feel it threaten to explode. Usually by now, she’d have grown bored of staring at her ceiling (even with her glow-in-the-dark constellations) and try to sneak downstairs to peek at her Abba’s _Native Birds of North America_ book. He let her look at it sometimes, but he always seemed a little bemused at her interest in it. He’d been the same when she asked for books about astronomy and dinosaurs, but her Ema seemed proud she was raising ‘a little scientist in the making’.

But even the sacred bird book wasn’t enough of a draw to get her out of bed. Her feet stayed firmly curled up under the blankets and her eyes were wide and watchful in the dark night.

Because, floating outside her windowsill was a clown.

His terrible head was propped up on his hands, like a parody of a schoolgirl. His face was of a black and white sad clown, which only made the fact that he hadn’t stopped _smiling_ even worse.

Well. It was technically a smile. His teeth were faintly glowing in the dark of the night, and they were-- 

Shanna’s Ema loved nature documentaries, and once she had seen one with her about sharks. The British men in their khakis had talked about shark’s teeth, about the rows and rows that could go way back in their throats. The smile the clown had looked like this, like the teeth went all the way down and that was _not supposed to happen in people._

She kept closing her eyes and opening them again, like a bad dream, but she knew it wasn’t a bad dream. She’d had nightmares before. They didn’t feel as grounded as this.

That was the worst part to her. The sheer offensiveness that this ghost, this monster, this _clown_ , had the audacity to exist in the same place as her. Floating off the ground and still smiling through her window.

“Go away,” she whispered angrily.

“Come out and play with me, Shanna,” the clown said. He had a terrible voice, rusted and sharp like a saw in the junkyard. “I’m so lonely out here.”

“Go away,” she repeated, drawing her blanket up over her ears. It didn’t seem to matter. His voice carried as clearly through the shut window as if he was in the room with her. She couldn’t truly look away from the clown however: something deep in her core could never let her look away from a predator.

The clown cackled, a high sound for such a raspy voice.

“Oh, aren’t you _fun,”_ he was still giggling between it’s words, “I don’t need to do anything to scare you, huh, Shoshanna?”

“I’m not scared,” she lied.

“I can smell your fear.” The growl emerged, hungry, and Shanna so dearly wanted to run.

“You’re not real!”

The clown slowly raised one of his bloody gloves to the window. The sound of a claw scraping in the glass was one of the worst sounds Shanna had ever heard. She had to clap her hands over her ears.

But she still watched, transfixed, as the bloody gloves scraped a red I T on her window. The blood was dark and dripping, even against the blackness of the night sky.

Shanna felt her breath go high and panicky, like Emily’s on one of her bad days.

“I ate Georgie Denbrough.” IT hissed. All traces of the smile was gone. “I’ve eaten many, many kids. I’m realer than any game you and your stupid friends are going to play and when I eat you, you’ll know that.”

With that, the clown disappeared.

But Shanna Uris didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Her bright eyes stayed fixed on the window and the blood dripped down. Watching. Waiting.

~

The next day dawned, bright and hot, like the summer days that only children can truly love.

There were two goals that day, and the seven girls treated them with the seriousness of deadly spy missions. One group had to go to the library, which excluded Richie and Emily. They were still banned, for reasons which they both refused to talk about other than Emily stating that it was a complete misunderstanding and Richie’s fault anyways and Richie declaring that public servants had no sense of humor.

So Shanna, Beth and Michaela split off to the library.

Richie, Emily, Bev and Libby, a bit more grimly, returned to the Denbrough residence to go search for the ‘talisman’, as Richie had said. Apparently, she had done some of her own research with some horror VHS tapes her parents kept. 

“It has to be a thing he had-- has,” Richie corrected quickly at Bev’s look, “an emotional attachment to.” She stretched out the long words, eyes furrowed in concentration behind her thick glasses. 

“But also one your parents won’t notice.” Bev offered. Their splinter group was walking their bikes as they discussed their strategy. 

Libby was silent, as usual. Emily, walking beside her, couldn’t seem to stop sending worried glances over. 

But it felt good, to all of them, to be doing something helpful. Ghost Georgie was scary, but a manageable problem was much better than watching Libby silently retreat further and further into herself. 

Before long, they were in front of the Denbrough residence. The three of them trailed behind Libby as she entered, passing by her mother in a dining room chair. She had her head in her hands. Emily tried a quiet “Hello, Mrs. Denbrough” but she stayed as still as a statue. 

Emily in particular could remember when entering the Denbrough house meant that little feet would come stomping down the stairs and Georgie would barrel into her to try and get a hug. She could remember Mrs. Denbrough singing along to the radio and Mr. Denbrough walking in from the garage already smiling and asking if “Miss Kaspbrak wanted to stay for dinner”. The memories only made the silence of the house feel more oppressive, like a physical pressure she could suffocate under.

She watched Libby make her way down the hallway and she wondered how she could stand it. But it’s not as if Emily was unfamiliar with unwelcoming homes.

Georgie’s old room was at the end of the hall, beside Libby’s. The door wasn’t locked. It didn’t need to be; by the faint layer of dust on his unmade bed, it hadn’t been opened since he disappeared. 

All of them stand there, frozen, for a long time.

Georgie’s toys and books were still scattered around the floor. It would have been easy enough, if they could have refocused on their mission, to reach in, snatch one up and not have to enter his room at all. But they knew that this had to be something more important. 

That didn’t make it any easier to step into the bedroom of their friend’s dead little brother. 

Eventually, it was Bev who went first, tossing her red hair over her shoulder and striding in like nothing was wrong. That broke the tension, enough that Richie followed her in with a huffed half-laugh at seemingly nothing, and Emily made up the rear with one hand in a firm grip on the back of Richie’s Hawaiian print shirt. 

Libby stood there for a few seconds longer, before taking a deep breath and stepping over the doorway. 

While the others- even fearless Bev- were hesitant to truly touch anything, Libby immediately went to his dresser, pushing aside some of his toys to find a little picture, carelessly dropped and unlabeled as if in a haste to get outside.

In the Polaroid, Georgie was beaming, with a little paper boat held carefully in his outstretched hands. Libby was in the background, smiling wanly as she was propped up in bed under the covers. 

She stared at it for long enough that her friends crowded around her shoulders to look. 

“Is that…?” Bev asked, wide-eyed. 

“That’s his raincoat.” Emily said quietly. The police still said he was missing, and the posters around town had a cropped picture from a little later, of Georgie in his yellow raincoat. He was wearing it in the picture, unzipped, clearly ready to take the little boat in the streams and rivers that ran through the streets when it rained. 

“I m-m-m-,” Libby took a deep breath, “I m-made that for h-him. That d-d-d--”

They didn’t need her to finish that sentence. 

“We should find the boat.” Richie decided, already clambering back to her feet. She was clumsy, already starting to get the awkwardness of puberty, so her climb knocked heavily into Bev. “That’s what he’s haunting.”

Libby shook her head. “It’s l-l-l-”

“Lost,” Emily supplied, “in the sewers?”

Libby nodded.

Richie’s scrawny shoulders slumped, but Bev, who had turned around to glare at Richie, went pale. Paler than normal. 

“What?” Richie said, turning around.

There, on the dusty bed, was a perfect little paper boat. 

There was silence.

Richie said a bad word and Emily smacked her arm on instinct, ignoring Richie’s exaggerated groan in favour of staring, wide-eyed at the boat that all of them knew had not been there when they walked in. 

“That’s definitely haunted.” Bev said grimly and Libby walked over to the bed and carefully scooped it up. The three of them made an involuntary noise when she touched it, like they’d seen a fragile thing fall and were trying, just a second too late, to warn her of the inevitable. 

But Libby cradled it carefully, turned back to them, and nodded. In one hand was the last photo of her and her brother and in the other the boat, cupped in her palm. 

They snuck out of the house like that, for all that it was worth. Mrs. Denbrough hadn’t moved at all from the graphic still-life of her grief, but sneaking around kept it a secret mission rather than stealing a dead boy’s toys.

~

Shanna, Beth and Michaela rode at a sedate pace to the library. If it wasn’t for the silent determination to which they pedaled, it could have been any other summer day. Michaela and Beth loved the library, and while Shanna was more likely to get dragged into some sort of outside adventure, she appreciated any space that had the same solemn level of rules as the library did. 

The librarian greeted Michaela when she came in, and nodded at the other two, but other than that they were free to search the stacks for hidden treasures unsupervised. There wasn’t a witchcraft section, but Michaela was determined to comb through the Folklore and Mythology shelf. The three of them picked up a big stack, went to the tables and settled in for a quiet morning of research. 

However, that was not necessarily meant to be. 

Shanna, not too long afterwards, had gone to go ask the reference librarian if she had any recommendations. And Michaela had wandered off, an absent look on her sweet face, to return to the dim stacks in search of even more books.

That had left Beth, bent over a notebook as she painstakingly wrote out any information she thought might help. There wasn’t much, but she still wrote out the titles in an attempt to look like she was doing any work.

The tactic served her well at school where, even at their early age, teachers seemed convinced that she was lazy and therefore, stupid. She wasn’t either but school wasn’t a place where she cared enough to make an effort. She had learned, very quickly, that for reasons outside of her control teachers wouldn’t extend the same sphere of protection to her as they would other kids. And children are unfortunately shockingly good at realizing when hurting someone has no consequences.

But one time, when one of the older girls had cornered her in the bathroom, Beverly Marsh had threatened to punch her in the nose. Beverly wasn’t the type of girl to make idle threats, so she had backed off. And the smile she gave Beth when she invited her to play along with her friends still made Beth’s heart feel warm whenever she thought about it.

She smiled, unconsciously, at the memory.

That wasn’t the only thing making her feel warm, though. Somehow, she could smell something… familiar. The library, which previously only had the scent of dust and old books, was filled with the aromas of baking. Spices, cloves, molasses. Exactly like her mother’s gingerbread.

Beth looked around in confusion. There wasn’t anything around her to explain it. But to the right of her table, there was now a door. It didn’t look like any of the doors she saw in the library. It was a deep, golden brown and had bright little gummy candies dotting the outside of it.

Beth wasn’t stupid. She never had been before. But unfortunately, one of the reasons Beth spent so much of her time in the library was that she was insatiably curious about everything and anything. She shared that need for new knowledge, for any sort of explanation of their world, with Michaela.

Thinking of Michaela made her remember the sluggishly bleeding scratches along her arms as she burst into the clubhouse yesterday. The monster had hurt her, had used the trees in the Barrens against her, and that meant it could hurt Beth too.

But she was already pressing her callused hand against the door and before she knew it, she was slipping inside.

The room was clearly not the library. She was suddenly inside a little cottage, with a lit oven on the other end of it. It was warm enough inside that the back of her neck prickled with sweat immediately.

And it was an exact replica of the gingerbread cottage from her mother’s book of German fairy tales.

Beth turned to run, immediately, but the door back had disappeared. She considered screaming, as if that would do any good, before a raspy voice spoke up behind her.

“Well, I think you’ve been fattened up enough.”

When she turned around, there was something in the room with her.

The creature was hunched, tall enough that her shoulders brushed the top of the little cottage. She was gaunt and starved, with an entire body made up of unnaturally pale skin stretched tight over a mishmash of jutting bones.

Her nose, in a detail that would have been funny if not for the circumstances, was red and round like a circus clown’s.

Beth did scream then, before biting it back. The creature was looking at her already, with drool starting to drip from her sharp mouth.

“Tasty, tasty little girl.” The creature groaned and then it leaped.

Beth rolled out of the way, already up and frantically looking around, but there was nowhere to run. The gingerbread room was just a square sweatbox and she was trapped.

But then, she remembered how the story ended.

Carefully, she picked her way along the edge until she was standing in front of the oven. The heat blazed at her back, but she stayed firm.

“Hey!” Beth yelled, her voice only shaking a little, “that’s all you’ve got?”

The creature hissed. “Delicious, plump little girl." This time, when she grabbed for her, she just dropped flat to the floor as the creature’s head drove into the flaming oven.

The creature screamed, terrible enough to make Beth flinch, but she jumped up anyways and started to push, forcing her deeper into the heat. The flames bursting out from the door licked at her hands, leaving painful red blisters behind, but she just shut her eyes and kept working, shoving more and more of the bony flesh into the door.

It was hard going, but before long Beth was slamming her shoulder against the oven door to shut it, ignoring both the searing pain and the dying screams from within.

Panting, Beth stepped back and brushed the sweat out of her eyes.

She felt sore and tired, but more than that, she realized she felt hungrier than she ever had before. Her hands went to her aching stomach but they felt… different. It was hard to focus past the starvation pangs, but her fingers were stretching out into long, bony, pale claws. It wasn’t just her hands: the rest of her limbs were stretching too, until she had to stoop to avoid hitting the ceiling. Drool was starting to collect in her mouth and the hunger, unbelievably, doubled. All she could think about now was meat, flesh, little girls she couldn’t wait to eat up.

She pictured her friends and all the deliciousness they were hiding under their skin.

But the thought of her friends cut through the hunger, just for a moment. And she remembered who she truly was.

So Beth looked at the oven and said, in her own voice, “Do you think this scares me?”

The room shattered into unreality. Beth closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was just a girl, sitting in the corner of the library with aching hands.

~

The bright sunshine was a relief after the suffocating silence of the Denbrough house. Libby, Emily, Bev and Richie walked down the street and to where they had stashed their bikes without incident. The plan was to meet up in the Barrens with the other group. 

But to do that they had to pass by the Neibolt house. 

All of the kids in town knew about the Neibolt house. It had been abandoned as far back as any of them could remember. Richie had asked her parents about it once and it had been like that for as far as they could remember too, which made it basically forever. It was half-boarded up, half-falling open, a twisted mass of splintered boards and sagging facades. 

Going too close to it was a long-used dare. Walking past it never really led to anything bad, but every time they went too close there was this discordant awareness, like a hum that made it impossible to get close without keeping a careful eye on the door. 

But IT didn’t come through the door. 

IT burst up from under the fence in an explosion of wild limbs. At the back, Emily bit off a wild shriek. For a brief second, there was only the mixed feelings of a fractured reality and a sudden, inexplicable group thought of _not yet._

But IT didn’t care. IT advanced on them as they scrambled with their bikes to get away, useless hands scrabbling over metal handlebars. 

IT appeared as something different to each of them.

To Bev, IT appeared bloody and gushing, IT’s mouth dripping with the viscera of little girls who had been stupid enough to get close. Under the blood was the shape of worn overalls and the faint suggestion of familiar facial features. The faint suggestion was enough for her, and she dug her fingernails into her palm in order to not scream. 

To Richie, IT looked like a vampire. She knew what vampires looked like, but this one, a tall woman with dark hair and a secret smile , was still somehow seductive for all she knew that vampires were dangerous. The markings around her eyes almost looked like glasses and as Richie watched, she tilted her head and let her fangs touch the bottom of her red lips. Richie got the sudden image of what she’d look like with her mouth pressed against the neck of a girl (brown hair, pink draining from her cheeks, oh no, Emily Emily Emily _EMILY RUN)_ and wanted to throw up.

To Emily, IT appeared like a man she had seen on the television with her mother. IT was male, undeniably, with bright, crazed eyes and something that looked like a knife glittering in his hand, but he also paradoxically had rope bruises tied tight along his wrists and she knew, she _knew_ , that if she let him get close enough to touch her those bruises would spread along her wrists and she’d just be a ‘...body recovered along the Kundeskag, with rope abrasions and signs of…” and Mommy always muted it by that part but she’d turn to her and say ‘Emily, men like that go after little girls that don’t listen to her mother and grow up to be sluts, that’s what happens to them and if you let them get you, you’ll break my heart, just break it in two” and Emily didn’t want to be a victim but if he touched her that’s what would happen, sure as the sun sets in the evening. She knew she’d be just a dead girl on the news and Mommy would just shake her head and say she always knew it, that’s what happened to little girls that didn’t listen to their mommies. Men like that got them. 

To Libby, IT looked like her little brother. Just as he always did.

It was Bev who moved first, grabbing a rock from the ground and throwing it. She struck IT right on the forehead with a lucky shot. The image rippled for a second, like a pond would, and that was enough to break them out of their paralyzed terror. 

“Fuck you!” Bev said viciously, the curse strange and unfamiliar in her young girl voice.

IT, to all of them, smiled widely. And it was a terrible smile. But by the time it moved, they were already balancing fully onto their bikes, hyperventilating, but with enough instincts left to pedal.

IT gave chase, but they were moving. And all of the Losers knew, they were the fastest kids around on their bikes. 

That day, their speed seemed almost superhuman. Behind them, they could hear a roar, and that roar triggered a long-buried ancestral instinct to cower, but they just kept pedaling as fast as they could. 

The streets rushed by in a blur of colours and someone should have noticed four young girls yelling as they biked away from a terrible monster, but it made perfect sense to them that adults couldn’t see ghosts. There was no one that could help them all but them, but that was okay, because they weren’t alone. 

That was IT’s mistake this time. 

For how out of breath they got, Richie, Bev and even Emily were still able to scream as many curse words as they knew at the advancing figure. The fear was still there, an acrid tang in the back of their throats, but transferring it to calling IT a “mother-sucking butthead” was enough for their child minds to comprehend. 

The most important goal was keeping up with Libby, who was silently leading the way. She was pedaling as fast as anyone had ever seen, eyes set in concentration and seemingly focused on the strange, winding route she was taking them on. She barely even looked back, even as IT got too close and made a grab for Emily’s bike.

Emily shrieked, and Richie almost unbalanced herself in an attempt to turn around and reach for her. IT got there first, pulling her off the bike and onto the ground, kneeling over her as Emily cried out in pain and without missing a beat, Bev stopped flat, grabbed another rock and threw it hard enough to knock IT over for a brief moment. 

That moment was long enough for Richie to dart in, scoop Emily up and pull her onto the bike behind her before all of them were off again.

“Are you okay?” Richie asked, panic clear in her voice, “Emily--”

Emily rubbed her wrists and pressed her forehead against her best friend’s back. She closed her eyes against the roar of the thwarted beast. “Just keep pedaling, Richie.”

It took IT long enough to get back up that by the time the monster had staggered to its feet they were at least a block and a half away. Bev kept stealing glances behind them, another rock weighing down her pocket, but by then, and by some invisible signal, Libby knew it was safe enough to turn into the darkness of the woods and the Barrens beyond. 

~

Michaela wavered on her tiptoes, reaching out with outstretched fingertips. She was in the stacks, between two towering shelves full of heavy books that blocked out any semblance of proper light. Derry residents didn’t seem to have an interest in mythology or folklore, so the books were covered in a fine layer of dust that she had to blow off to painstakingly read the long, obscure titles.

She was just pulling free the heavy book when the first whispers started. 

“Michaela,” She heard and she jolted, looking around. There was no one anywhere near her.

“Michaela.” There it was again. It sounded….like a kid. Like a little girl her age. “Michaela, you should be more careful.”

She shook her head.

“You should be more careful. Because I’m going to eat you whole. I’m going to swallow you up. Little girl, little girl, let me in.”

Michaela shook her head harder, closing her eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you.” She whispered, because it was the library. Her hands were shaking. She dropped the book, and the noise almost made her cry out.

“Do you remember my trees, Michaela? Why do you keep going into the woods? Aren’t you scared?”

Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes. “I’m not scared.” The cuts on her arms twinged, as if to remind her that that was a mistake. 

“I am going to crack your bones between my teeth.” The voice hissed, getting lower.

Michaela frowned. “I’m not scared of _you._ I’m gonna find the right book and then we’re gonna be witches. _All_ of us. And seven witches can for sure beat one ghost.”

There was a pause. And then terrible, quiet laughter built up until it was loud enough that Michaela had to cover her ears.

“ _Witches_ ,” IT said scornfully, “you’re all just a bunch of lost little lambs in the woods. I will kill you all, so slowly that the fairy tales you were so terrified of will seem like nursery rhymes.”

Michaela straightened back up, mouth set. There was a glimmer of something in the corner of her vision. A book, with gold binding clips that glinted, even in the dark library.

“I’m not scared of you,” she repeated, stretching up to grab the book, “So go _away.”_

The book was heavy in her small hands and it felt _right._ Michaela smiled.

~

A tableau:

Seven girls, crowded around a small folding table in a clubhouse. The book is open between them and they are deciding how to build a bonfire to match the one in the faded illustrations. 

Seven girls splitting off to find firewood and rocks, scurrying about the trees with remarkably little fear for how badly their beloved forest attacked one of their own just the day before. 

Seven girls, standing around a small pit Beth dug out. They are apprehensive, but Shanna brought her dad’s fire extinguisher from his office (it’s long-expired, but she doesn’t know that) and Emily has a bucket of water scooped up from the Kundeskag clutched tightly in her hands. 

Bev is holding the matches, but she is looking at Libby for the signal.

They had worked all afternoon, laying out small stones according to Michaela’s directions. She was almost dwarfed by the size of the old book in her arms, but there was an element of calm expertise in her voice that made them listen to her like an adult, not the kid she is in stature.

The tableau lingers. Seven girls standing in a circle close enough to reach hands and staring at Libby with a patient anticipation that none of them had ever felt before. 

Libby’s hands move with a surety her voice will lack for years to come and she reaches for Richie’s hand to cut a shallow line in her friend’s palm.

Richie hisses, biting back a curse, but Libby presses the little boat of her brother’s against the thin bubbling of blood, before moving on to Emily on the other side. 

Shanna is next, then Beth, then Bev, and finally Michaela, who stares directly at her face with something she can’t recognize yet as love and awe in equal measure. 

Finally, carefully, she places the blood-soaked paper boat on top of the stacked firewood. With only a little hesitation, she nestles the photo taken from Georgie’s room beside it and nods at Bev.

Bev takes the matchbox and drops one, two, three lit bundles of sparks into the pit. It takes a moment or so, but the kindling catches and before long there is a fire, bigger than any of them actually expected, roaring before their eyes. 

Without speaking, they take each other’s hands. The circle of seven girls, hand in bloody hand, is complete and they stare into the fire and the curling, blackened remains of Georgie Denbrough’s paper boat. 

“What now?” Richie asks.

“Witches dance around their fires,” Michaela says absently. 

“Then let’s boogie!” Richie cries enthusiastically, and then she is off. 

None of them are old enough for the self-consciousness that will plague their teenage years. They dance with complete abandon, twisting and spinning and yelling until they feel nothing like the ‘proper young ladies’ they are expected to be soon. They are witches now, and they are of the woods, and no one is here to tell them to be quiet and good. Aches and injuries fade away in the sheer joy of movement, of crashing into each other and laughing, of the fire dancing along in the middle of their circle.

Even Libby is smiling, for the first time in weeks. 

The sun sets without them noticing. The fire is soon the only thing lighting their surroundings, but none of them are afraid. The ghost might come, the monster might be watching, but they are witches and for one night, they feel invincible in the way that only children feel. Seven young witches dance in Derry and IT is nowhere to be seen.

That night, Libby Denbrough had a dream.

That night, all of them had a dream. But only Libby remembered it, as flickers of fire.

The next day, Libby was in the clubhouse before anyone else. She was watchful, waiting as her yawning friends entered one-by-one.

“IT’s in the sewers.” Her stutter only threatened at the back of her tongue. “I’m going to go find IT.”

Libby led them across streams, down ancient piles of rocks and further into the Barrens that any of them had ever been before. The trees grew closer together this far from town and the sunlight grew more and more filtered until, abruptly, they were standing in a blindingly bright clearing. In the exact middle of the clearing, surrounded by nothing but scarred dirt, was a mounded entrance. Technically, DERRY PUBLIC WORKS was stamped across it but to them, it looked a lot more like a mystical entrance than the bridges and power boxes that they were familiar with. 

Libby stopped, brushing her fingertips against the rusted metal. “Here.” She said decisively. 

It opened easily under her touch and the seven of them could see the start of a ladder down, deep into whatever lay beneath. 

They were brave in their clubhouse, in their kingdom, but the bleakness of the dark tunnel scared them out of that borrowed sense of bravery. Not even Richie, she of the skinned elbows and climbed trees, steps forward to join Libby. Not even Bev. 

“C-c-c’mon, guys.” Libby said, glancing back at them. 

But they were split, stepping back and all at once, they protested. 

“If I get hurt, my mom--”

“We’re not allowed to be here, it’s not safe--”

“That ladder seems unsteady, we should come back with flashlights--”

“We should just go back--”

“What even makes you think he’s--”

Their voices twisted together, but they’re no longer together and invincible. They were just girls once again, and the reality of the situation makes the game no longer fun.

It’s Richie who finally said it, fittingly. She stepped towards Libby and said, both honest and hurtful; “Libby, Georgie’s dead. Going down into this sewer won’t bring him back.”

They all went quiet. 

“I k-know that,” Libby said, “I k-know it’s not--” She took in a great, shuddering breath, “I know it’s not Georgie. But IT’s hurting us and that means we have to stop IT.”

“We can’t do this.” Shanna said, “We should get the grown-ups.”

“They can’t help,” Libby shook her head “they can’t even see IT.”

“But what can we do?” Emily said, “we’re just a bunch of girls.”

Libby took another deep breath, and then spoke for the longest they had heard her speak in weeks.

“We are just a bunch of girls. And in all the monster stories we know, that means we get eaten. But that’s not how we have to die. We don’t need a hero to save us. IT might be a scary monster, and this cave might be dangerous, but we’re also a bunch of witches. And you know what happens to witches in fairy tales?” Her eyes were almost wild in her narrow face, “They get to live and they curse anyone who tries to hurt them. I don’t know if this is the kind of story where the witch wins, but I don’t want to be the dead girl anymore. This monster has tried to eat us and IT ate my brother so I’m going to hurt IT real bad until IT leaves us all alone. I’d like it if you helped.”

Maybe it was the feral ritual they had already done together the night before. Maybe it was the bond, starting to pulse across their palms. Maybe they all just loved Libby too much to let her do this alone. But one by one, they stepped forward to join her at the entrance. Michaela, then Richie, Bev and Beth together and finally Emily when Richie winked at her. She never could pass up a dare. 

Only Shanna remained at the edge of the clearing, shaking her head back and forth. 

“I can’t,” she said, with tears threatening at the edge of her eyes, “I can’t--”

“You can,” Emily insisted, “witches have to stick together.”

“I’m not a witch,” Shanna said, with her voice raised, “that’s just pretending. This is _real._ We could get _really_ hurt. I’m just a girl and I’m not brave like the rest of you and I want to go _home_ \--.”

Libby stepped forward and wrapped her up in a tight hug. Shanna’s head dropped to her shoulder and Libby started shushing her softly as her own shoulders shook. The others, not yet old enough to experience self-consciousness at people’s blatant displays of weaknesses, carefully crowded around the pair.

“It’ll be okay, Shanna.” Beth said quietly, her hand brushing across the top of Shanna’s head. “Don’t cry.”

“You’re plenty brave.” Richie said next. “And you also danced around the fire, so you’re just as much a witch as the rest of us.”

“I’m not,” Shanna repeated, a terrible crack in her voice, “I’m just a girl.”

Bev stepped forward and pressed her forehead to the back of Shanna’s neck in a clumsy gesture of adolescent comfort. 

“Girls can be brave too,” Beverly said gravely. 

She said this to Shanna’s back, but they all heard. Bev was the bravest of all of them, always the first to leap off tall cliffs into water or to climb the highest into the precarious branches of a tree. If she said this, they could believe her. 

Including Shanna, who straightened up with a shuddering breath and wiped off her face with her sleeve. “Okay,” she said, straightening her shirt as much as possible, “I’m coming.”

“That’s my girl,” Richie said in a parody of her father. 

It wasn’t as fun to defeat a monster if you had to leave one of your friends behind. Beneath that childish sentiment was a deep, unnamed knowledge that if they had lost one of their seven, it was like losing a link to the chain that could, maybe, bring them out of the darkness once they went in. 

“I love all of you.” Libby said solemnly. 

Carefully, she took Richie’s hand, who took Emily’s, and then so on until they were linked in the same order as before. Too slowly to notice, the healing cuts on their palms reopened painlessly and started dripping down onto the dirt below. 

And then, strung together in a line like children on a field trip, they descended into the sewers. 

It was only darkness at first. And then--

They remember nothing.

(they remember being one creature, with fourteen eyes and fourteen hands that blur together, that blur everything, that blurs _reality)_

(they’re girls but they’re not but they’re not witches and they’re not afraid. there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore)

(the monster is there and shesheshe has big teeth and sharp claws and a fierce roar but she’s just a spider, really, when reduced down and mommyemamom always said that spiders are more scared of weusIIIIII)

(and everything’s blurred together so they don’t have to find IT not really they ask and there IT is and IT’s roaring IT’s crying she’s saying that this isn’t _fair,_ that this isn’t the story, this is against the Rules)

(and theyusI think about Rules. they think about Rules that IT caused, safety nets they’ve lived under their whole lives. they think about Rules that say they’re not meant to survive this, that Girls are Prey for everyone else and Girls are Protected or they’re not but that’s the Girls Fault)

(they think about fairy tales. they think about stories. they think about who tells them.)

(and they say, in one Terrible Voice WE DON’T LIKE YOUR RULES ANYMORE)

(they reach in to IT’s chest and they crush her heart in all fourteen of their still childlike hands)

(and then everything is even blurrier and theywe _I_ are both coalescing, yoking, joining even tighter. then there’s one individual voice, maybe it’s emily, maybe it’s bev but they’re saying)

( _we could stay like this)_

( _forever_ )

( _why?_ someone else, or maybe the same)

( _we could do anything, like this. make any story we want)_

( _but forever?_ )

( _ems i’d miss you_ and that’s richie for sure, richie free of her own voices and unable to hide her longing)

( _oh i’d miss you too)_

( _we have to separate. nothing lasts forever)_

( _except for maybe love_ )

( _weI will love you all forever and ever)_

( _promise?_ )

( _pinky promise_ )

(for the briefest moment the collective terrible Voice is back)

( _they can’t separate us. not for real. not now. not ever._ )

( _but we have to let go.)_

( _i love you)_

(one voice, slowly split into seven)

And then there are seven girls sitting in a circle in a clearing. 

The entrance, still with the DERRY PUBLIC WORKS sign, was rusted shut. It looked like it had never been opened. It looked like it never could be opened. 

The now-girls blinked, slowly, and shook their heads. The cuts on their hands were bleeding sluggishly, but it barely stung. They were holding hands again, sitting with their legs crossed like the games they play at school. The sunlight seemed impossibly bright.

Richie opened and closed her mouth a few times. The rest of them looked at her, waiting for her to break the silence. They didn’t know how to ask about what just happened. Already, the memory was in the process of disappearing, like it was too strange and slippery to stay in their heads and now it was leaking out through their ears. 

Libby had a paper boat in her lap. She was the only one not looking at Richie. She was staring at the paper boat and tears threatened to fall from her pale eyes. 

Richie tried again. “Do we want to play jump rope tomorrow?”

Emily made a face, still clutching Richie’s hand. “Richie, you know I’m terrible at jump rope.”

“You’re terrible at everything, Ems, we can’t let that stop us.”

“Don’t be a jerk!” 

Shanna let go of Emily and Beth’s hands to start fussing at the bleeding cut, rubbing at the blood with her little pocket handkerchief and a bit of the otherworldliness breaks. The girls stretched out, started talking over themselves and in Richie's case, are free to start searching for grass that she can pile on Emily’s head. 

The innocent little paper boat listed in the breeze. Libby does start to cry then, quiet enough to not be noticed by anyone but Michaela. She reached out to hold Libby’s hand.

Libby didn’t know how to express the mixture of guilt, relief and unfiltered sadness she was feeling. But she knew that her friends loved her and at that moment, that had to be enough.

With that, even with the paper boat, the memory of what they briefly became in the sewers fully slipped away. 

Nothing had really changed.

On a level under the reality on which they all floated, oblivious once again, everything has changed.

But that blissful pool of reality included a long trek back through the forest, jump ropes and a new surety that there was nothing that could ever tear the seven of them apart. 

And for Libby, Richie, Emily, Michaela, Beth, Bev and Shanna, that was enough. They don’t want to think about the what-ifs of the lower layer, so they simply won’t. For a long while.

It was a beautiful summer day. 

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to my girlfriend, who was a huge help in editing! happy almost anniversary my love
> 
> if you liked this, let me know! I really loved working on this, despite the stress of a deadline


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